Bravery and Faith
by GKingOfFez
Summary: Bodhi Rook is not a soldier, or a politician, or an important man of any kind. He's just the pilot. He brought the message. / A Bodhi character study of sorts, tracking his life both before and through the events of Rogue One.


Bodhi Rook is not a soldier, or a politician, or an important man of _any_ kind. He is nothing but an insignificant cargo pilot who will never make any difference to anything in his lifetime. Bodhi knows, understands and accepts this fact, mainly because he has no choice but to.

When Bodhi was a child, he'd been just another hopeless, naïve dreamer looking up at the ships heading for the atmosphere and wanting nothing more than to fly out among the stars beside them. He'd tried to become an Imperial Starfighter pilot for the thrill and adventure the propaganda had promised, and when that failed he'd ended up in cargo transport lugging official Imperial documents and crates of artefacts from planet to planet. Still among the stars, still flying through the vast coldness of space and the dazzling blue of hyperspace tunnels, but it was never _quite_ what he expected.

Still, Bodhi follows his orders and does his deliveries without complaint like everyone else around him. It's his job, but all the while a strange feeling brews itself in his gut, a feeling that tells him that something is, in fact, very, _very_ wrong. The stars had seemed to shine so brightly when he was a child looking up at the night sky, but in the middle of an Imperial fleet they seemed dull, lifeless and drained somehow.

It takes almost a year for him to slowly but surely realise that the Empire is not a benevolent authority keeping peace and order in the aftermath of the Clone Wars (as he had been raised to believe), but rather a cold and bloody dictatorship that is enforcing its own strict rule on the galaxy. It takes another month after that for this realisation to fully sink in.

All the while, Bodhi starts paying more attention and sees the signs everywhere he looks-the Stormtroopers streaked with blood of every colour, the worlds bullied and beaten into submission or wiped out entirely, and even the artefacts that he transports, stolen from ravaged temples and holy lands, from the hands of priests and people desperate to preserve what remains of their cultures.

But worst of _all_ of this, it becomes clear to him that the Empire is building a weapon.

 _The_ weapon, to end all others- a moon, that wasn't a moon, but a _space station_ , the other pilots whispered; a planet-killer that could fracture entire star systems in minutes. The whole concept seems universe-shattering, and sends chills deep into Bodhi's bones whenever he thinks too hard about it. He tries not to, most of the time.

However, if he is truly honest with himself, (as he lies in his bunk late in the transport's night cycle), what scares him most about the Empire is _himself_ \- he is a cog, one tiny, miniscule puzzle piece, but a part nonetheless, of the whole terrible whirring, ticking, complex design. How could he possibly hope to change anything? He isn't _important_ by any definition.

He's just a pilot.

An _Imperial_ cargo pilot.

And sooner or later he will be compliant in the slaughter of millions, _billions_. Blood on the Empire's hands would transfer to his own soul. The longer he works, going through the motions of each work day, the more he feels a weight pressing in on his heart, stifling his words and suffocating him from the inside out.

But there is nothing _he_ can do- they would _kill_ him, he's seen it happen before, and besides that, nothing _he_ did would ever make a difference to anyone.

He is just the pilot and a coward, while the Empire is absolute and overpowering.

* * *

He finds himself on Eadu. There, he meets Galen Erso, and Galen sees right through him.

It becomes clear to Bodhi over time spent talking in quiet, unsurveyed corners that Galen is his opposite- brave, true to himself and capable of sending shockwaves through the Empire big enough that even the _Emperor himself_ would feel them- and Bodhi can't help but admire that.

Galen Erso is kind, persuasive and patient, and when he asks the galaxy of Bodhi Rook he does so not with a promise of reward but with the promise of chance- take a message to the rebellion and _maybe you can still save your soul._

Go to Jedha, go to Saw Gererra.

Break from the Empire's design. Find redemption. _Maybe._

Bodhi isn't sure he'll ever truly earn it. He's seen too many terrible things before his eyes, and done nothing to stop them.

He spends a lot of time debating with himself, frightened by either outcome. Desertion is a death sentence, but remaining promises a worser fate. And what if he fails? What if the message falls into the hands of the Empire? Would he doom them all?

Ultimately, though, Bodhi Rook decides to take Galen Erso's message.

 _If I can't make a difference myself,_ Bodhi reasons in his head, _then maybe I can be the messenger to the one that can. Maybe be brave enough to do just that will be enough._

So, he defects- he leaves his ship behind and leaps right into danger and uncertain territory, terrified to go forward but more terrified to look back.

The imbalance in force propels him onwards.

* * *

Jedha is his homeworld (or, more accurately his homemoon).

He'd grown up on this soil; he knows the constellations in the sky by heart. He'd flown away from here long ago with big dreams, and he returns today with nothing the clothes on his back and a message for Saw Gerrerra.

He'd known about the Imperial occupation, but seeing it from the ground only makes him more determined in his mission. The temples are stripped bare of kyber crystals, the streets are crowded with displaced people and there are too many in the throng carrying worry in their eyes and weapons close to their chests. It is far from the moon he'd known as a child.

He hopes the Rebellion will be kind to him, as he anxiously walks through the Holy City, jumping at every too-loud sound. Something tells him they will be- after all, if the Empire and the Emperor are the villains, building superweapons and destroying hope across the galaxy, then the Alliance can only be the heroes- the exact opposite of what his superiors had always preached. Right?

If only the galaxy were so black and white.

* * *

Saw Gerrera is _not_ kind at all. Saw Gerrera doubts him and forces him to his knees, and makes him choke out his words through a lump in his throat. The Bor Gullit leaves him drifting in his own mind, fuzzy, aimless and not tied to the ground beneath him, or the well-known stars above him either. They put him away into the shadows of a tunnel, behind metal bars.

Galen Erson had given him the message, and he had given it to Saw Gerrara freely. _He had given it freely and he hadn't been lying!_ The Bor Gullit had torn him apart for _nothing_ , nothing, nothing. Was that fair, or wasn't it? Bodhi is too out of it to ponder that thought too deeply.

Sometime later, he hears a man's voice through the mist, asking urgently- _"Are you the pilot?"_

"I'm the pilot," he replies, when he finally understands the words. "I brought the message, _I'm the pilot_."

He is the pilot.

The Imperial cargo pilot.

The _defected_ Imperial pilot.

He tells them where Galen is, and they free him as the world begins to shake and falling apart beneath his boots.

He follows them outside, and a flood of _horror_ sends red hot awareness through his entire system. He looks to where the Holy City _should_ have stood, and sees nothing; centuries of history, and sacred soil, all _gone_.

Bodhi had never lived there- he'd been born and raised in one of smaller settlements on another part of the moon, but he'd seen the city only days before. It had been teeming with _life_ , from the smells and sounds of the markets to children playing in the streets and now all those people were nothing but _dust_.

They run from the catacombs, jumping on to a small ship that is tiny against the backdrop of terrifying destruction before Bodhi's eyes. The ground ruptures beneath them as they fly away, and the shockwave of debris tears dirt up into the sky, blocking out the sun in its awe-some wake.

He is sure he's going to die on that ship- the debris is falling around them and the situation appears hopeless. An entire city had been snuffed out like _nothing_ , and they are just one speck against a monolith of destruction, just five people and a droid thrown together versus a world tearing itself to pieces.

Before they jump to hyperspace, he glimpses a white moon through the front window (that he knows is not a moon) hanging ominously in the sky. The planet-killer is already wreaking destruction and mass murder, and it is partly _his_ fault.

* * *

On the ship is Galen Erso's daughter. There is something of Galen in her jaw structure, and her eyes.

Galen had spoken of her like the early poets had spoken of the stars- beautiful and distant, but dearly loved whether they were alive in the sky at night or dimmed in the light of day. Bodhi had gotten the feeling from the sadness in Galen's eyes and his fervour in talking about her to him that he'd spent so long staying silent, all the emotions of love and longing had built up desperately within him.

 _No one_ should live like that, separated from their loved ones and left alone in such fear.

Bodhi Rook has no loved ones to be separated from. He'd only had an old father, who had disagreed with his ambitions to join the Starfighter program and then died some time ago. It had made defecting from the Empire a far easier decision than it might have been otherwise- he had only truly risked his own life. There was something brave, or maybe selfish in that.

Bodhi has no idea how far the shockwave from the star-killer's blast would travel across Jedha's surface- perhaps it would eventually reach his home city, and everything he'd known there would be gone as well. He doesn't let that thought weigh him down too much, although it does briefly paralyse him in his seat.

If anything, it helps propel him forward; not out of a desire for revenge, but a fervent wish to make sure no other worlds suffer in the same way.

Jyn Erso tells them Galen's message, the one Bodhi had kept in his shoe for days.

 _There is a critical flaw in the Empire's Planet-Killer,_ she says, _a small, insignificant, catastrophic flaw_. One hit to the reactor core, and the entire system goes down.

Get a hold of the plans, and the weakness is revealed, but first they need to rescue Galen Erso.

That feels right to Bodhi, like he is returning a favour.

* * *

It doesn't feel right, however, leaving Cassian Andor on that ridge. Cassian had carried his sniper rifle like it was heavier than it needed to be, and was far too insistent that Bodhi leave him alone. Bodhi leaves anyway- a bit of him is just used to taking his orders without question, but he also has to trust that Cassian knows what he is doing. The man is part of the rebellion, and the rebellion is the Good Guys after all.

 _He'll find a way to get Galen out,_ Bodhi reasons to himself, as he trudges back to the ship and K-2SO. _After all, the Rebellion needs Galen alive. They wouldn't have sent Cassian to kill him, right?_

He later finds that trust to be misplaced. They leave in a stolen cargo ship, the world on fire behind them, with everyone except Galen. His blood soaks Jyn's hands and seems to seep heavily into her soul.

He can't help but hope, as his fingers dance across the familiar controls of the ship, flying them away, that Galen has finally found himself at peace. A better peace would, perhaps, have been seeing the monstrous star-killer destroyed- but at the very least, he'd seen his daughter again. Stardust, he'd called her once.

Bodhi knows now that as long as he is alive, he will stop at nothing to finish what Galen Erso had started.

* * *

If only the rest of the Rebellion had agreed with him.

The people on the Alliance's secret base look at him with distrust. He can't blame them, really, he has no other clothes than the ones he was wearing when he defected, still emblazoned with the Empire's insignia. The uniform of an Imperial cargo pilot.

While they're all waiting for the Rebel leaders to arrive for the big meeting, Jyn, Baze and Chirrut surround him, threateningly staring down anyone who looks like they might challenge Bodhi's place on the base. He is grateful for their friendship, even if he feels like he deserves some of the hate coming his way.

After all, he had been compliant. He had been a cog in the Empire's design, a cargo pilot blindly following orders. But he'd also been _their_ pilot, his new makeshift crew's, and maybe that counts for something as well.

He'd brought them the message. They'd brought him to the Rebellion.

* * *

Bodhi feels like he is suffocating as the Alliance council decides not to go to Scarif.

He'd once been at a welcome ceremony, in a line with his fellow pilots and standing as straight as he could as _Darth Vader_ _himself_ stalked past. Vader was as terrifying as the stories said- tall, shrouded in black, breathing haggardly through a respirator in his eyeless, shining black mask. Bodhi had had nightmares for weeks about that _sound_ , and he'd never forget the image of Vader choking a mid-ranking officer to death without ever touching the man. That kind of darkness and tyranny had no place in the galaxy he knew to be full of wonders like brightly-coloured nebulas and love.

When he leaves the room, and the bickering politicians (who have no idea- _no idea_!), behind, following Jyn, his path becomes solidifies. He'd risked his life to bring Galen's message to Saw Gerrera. Galen had died because the rebellion sent fighter ships to Eadu. _Galen had_ _died_ , and if the Rebellion didn't get their hands on the plans on Scarif, he would have died for _nothing_.

Luckily, Bodhi's new friends are already well ahead of him. They have a plan, _hope_ , and twenty brave volunteers. There's no question at all of Bodhi staying behind.

* * *

Bodhi Rook is not a soldier. He can't fight like Baze, Chirrut, Jyn, Cassian or any of the other rebels squashed into the stolen cargo ship can (with their fists and their blasters and their brave, unrelenting desire for galactic freedom from the Empire) but he can still rebel in other ways: he can fly them to Scarif; he can get them past the shield, and into the complex; he can misdirect the Imperial Command centre into sending troops where they don't need to go.

Bodhi Rook knows he is going to die, that _Rogue One_ is a suicide mission, even before the shield closes and seals them inside the planet-wide cage.

He knows this- _and does it all anyway_.

The other rebels have long stopped looking on him with distrust. None of that matters now that they are all here for the same cause, the _right_ cause. They are all here to die for it, side-by-side on the sand.

He isn't a fighter, he doesn't take part in the battle- he doesn't even have his own blaster, but he sees the fighters, his _friends_ , die before his eyes, while the Starfighters go down overhead. He listens to their last screams over comms, and keeps going. The atmospheric shield is in place and there's no escape, no _hope_ for them on the planet's surface.

But he still tries and tries and _tries_ , because there _is_ still hope- a new, bright, gleaming _hope_ \- for the rest of the galaxy. He believes in Cassian and K2-S0. Mostly, he believes in Jyn Erso. She would do what her father had done before her, and be brave and determined in the face of her mission, even if it ended in her own death. Today, she would send a shockwave through the Empire so great that _both_ the Empire and Darth Vader would feel it. Bodhi feels this in his bones.

There is a critical flaw in the Empire's _Death Star_ , a small, insignificant, _catastrophic_ flaw. One hit to the reactor core, and the entire system goes down. _The entire system goes down-_ Galen Erso had made sure of this. Transmit the plans and the weakness is revealed, and billions of lives will be _saved_.

And _maybe_ Bodhi Rook's soul will be saved as well.

Connect the ship to the main communications system, and boost a signal through to the Rebel Fleet above. It's the only way, the only hope.

Bodhi tries, his lungs screaming, his legs burning. A battle rages around him, the men who'd stayed on the ship with him all fall to blasters bolts. He is afraid, _terrified_. But Bodhi never once regrets what he has done or wishes that he'd never met Galen. Not once.

It takes every ounce of bravery he has, doing exactly what Jyn had told them- take every chance, chance after chance after _chance_ \- until it all ran out.

Bodhi had never been an important man, but right now _he_ is the one sending the message.

 _Take down the shield so the plans can be transmitted. Take them, destroy the star-killer Death Star, destroy the Empire._

The Rebel fleet hears him. He breathes a deep, freeing sigh of relief at General Raddus' reply. They hear him. _They hear him! They got the message!_

He thanks the Gods, the Force, and Galen Erso for it.

 _This is for you,_ he says. He hopes that somewhere out there, Galen knows Bodhi has found his bit of redemption.

It's not over yet, but Bodhi _has_ made a difference after all. Maybe he _is_ more than just a pilot after all.

A grenade clinks to the ground beside him. His mind goes blank, but not with fear- there's no time for fear. Not time for anything except to see a flash of his family- both the one he'd left behind years ago on Jedha, and the one he'd recently found in four strangers, a droid and a rebellion.

It all melts to pain, and then blackness.

Bodhi Rook can only hope he's done enough.

* * *

 _My dudes, I **loved** Rogue One. It was amazing, and it actually spurred me into becoming a fully-fledged Star Wars fan. I grew up watching all the Star Wars movies, but it was this one that made me truly and deeply invested in the universe as I've never been before._

 _It's why I watched the Clone Wars and then Rebels, and subsequently why I'm on this current writing kick. I'm just having a whole lot of fun with it my dudes, and that's Good!_

 _My longtime friend and internet significant other Haley absolutely adores Bodhi, and so I meant to have this finished as a birthday gift and then I just… didn't finish it. Haley's birthday was back in January. OOPS. Sorry bby, I love you, here you are. 3_

 _I once again **agonised** over the title. I'm not good with titles, my dudes._

 _One last note, I haven't read the Rogue One novel yet, but I did read up on as much of Bodhi's backstory as I could. So if anything here is inconsistent with something in the canon, that's why._

 ** _Thanks for reading!_**


End file.
